I'm in the Canadian Arctic, EP99, Igloolik Island, NA-174. Foxe Basin. I'll be here for a couple more weeks.

Have been trying to work PSK31 qrp with 2watts using a Small Wonders 20m rig into a folded dipole. For a few hours at mid day I am seeing many tracings on DigiPan, a lot of them decode very well. Most of the PSK31 tracings have a "saw tooth" edge to the pattern on the waterfall. Is this auroral effect on the signal? Sometimes I see transient bursts where there are hundreds of signals on the waterfall.

After several hours of calling CQ or responding to other's calls no one is answering me. I wonder if aurora is wiping out my signal? Igloolik Is is about 69deg north Lat, so likely beneath the auroral ring.

Will I need more power to punch out of this QTH with a signal that can be heard?

PSK31 is not very tolerant of distortion. It's pretty common for signal going over the poles to be strong with zero copy. The only fix I know of is to use a different mode. RTTY would probably work better.

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